In a YouTube video this week, Alton takes on the fruit that is seemingly impossible to cut — the mango. In a comedic parody (including a massive amount of faux blood), Alton walks food fans through two bad ways to cut this fruit, then he describes the best tactic: Remove all the peel from the mango except for two circles in the center of each cheek. Holding this skin for support, you can then slice the mango easily on each side of the seed. The skin will provide a tough grip so you don’t drop the mango and cut yourself.

On Cutthroat Kitchen, the sabotages are created to confuse the contestants and make them think on their feet. This is especially the case with the ingredient swaps, where the chefs have to trade in their gourmet ingredients with sub par foods of host Alton Brown‘s choosing. This is precisely what happened in the cheesecake round, where Chef Diana made Chef Eric harvest his cheese from a platter of leftover cream cheese bagels, cream cheese Danish, Philly cheese steaks and sour-cream-filled baked potatoes.

“That’s messed up,” said judge Jet Tila on this week’s Alton’s After-Show. “I don’t know how long that’s been sitting here!” Still, he admitted that he had no idea that the cheese had been adulterated in any way, stating, “It came together, it was cheesy, and I didn’t get any of the weird savory bits.” Chef Eric smartly harvested the cream cheese of the Danish and bagels, and, as Alton said, “He definitely earned every bit of it.”

Alton loves his steak, and with summer looming, now is the perfect time to get out that barbecue and start grilling. As Alton mentions in his latest YouTube video, his favorite type of steak to grill is the skirt steak. Heated directly on coals, this succulent meat needs no marinade except for some salt.

Alton also experiments in the kitchen, however, with a number of ways to eat steak. Here are five more:

1. He creates a spicy marinade with pepper flakes and Mexican brown sugar in this Skirt Steak recipe.

This week’s was a Cutthroat Kitchen episode like none other as host Alton Brown welcomed four of Cutthroat’s frequent judges into the kitchen — not to evaluate competitors’ dishes, but to be the battling chefs for the day. In true evilicious fashion, the sabotages didn’t stop just because the contestants were superstars Antonia Lofaso, Geoffrey Zakarian, Jet Tila and Simon Majumdar; in fact, this episode saw some of the trickiest tests yet, and what resulted were three rounds of brutal mind games. While Alton’s After-Shows are known for revealing all to the once-sequestered judges, this week’s catch-up found Alton with the judges-turned-competitors, and together they shared plenty of laughs as they looked back at the good-natured challenges that had just taken place.

The infamous mini kitchen made an appearance in Round 1, and much of the group agreed with Simon when he deemed it the “Best. Challenge. Ever.” After being gifted that challenge, Jet admitted, “I was deathly afraid of it. I didn’t even know how to, like, navigate that thing.” Geoffrey ultimately found himself tasked with adapting to this tiny workspace, but, according to him, “It’s not as bad as it appears.” And it’s a good thing that Geoffrey didn’t seem to mind the sabotage, as Simon — jokingly — noted later: “The reason it only went for $1,500 is I think some of us agreed that we should give it to Geoffrey for no other reason than we wanted to see Geoffrey Zakarian — the Iron Chef — kneeling down, cooking in the kitchen.”

For the first time on Sunday night (at 10|9c), the contestants taking their turns on Cutthroat Kitchen won’t be everyday chef-competitors; instead the judges, Antonia Lofaso, Geoffrey Zakarian, Jet Tila and Simon Majumdar, will enter the throes of sabotage and battle against each other for Cutthroat glory. Although the group is most familiar with simply tasting the aftermath of a challenge, they’re keenly aware of the kinds of evilicious obstacles Alton‘s been known to auction off. Just ahead of this weekend’s special episode, FN Dish checked in with Alton to find out what he has planned. Read on below to hear from Alton in an exclusive interview and learn his thoughts on the competition plus his advice for the judges.

Regardless of who’s competing — contestants or judges — what is one key piece of advice you think everyone should know before beginning a Cutthroat battle?Alton Brown: Shop for the unexpected. It’s easy to grab ingredients for a specific dish, but remember … in Cutthroat Kitchen you never know what sabotages might be coming your way. Don’t just load for bear; load for monsters.

Let’s face it: The best part of sangria is the fruit soaked in whatever concoction you’ve mixed together. And the longer the fruit stays in the liquid, the better it gets. So take a tip from one of the original kitchen hackers himself, Alton Brown. Click play on the video above to find out how he keeps that fruit soaking to its fullest extent.

“This is awesome. I say that all the time, but I really mean it,” judge Jet Tila told Cutthroat Kitchen host Alton Brown on tonight’s brand-new After-Show. “I know I keep saying that. This really is awesome,” he added. Jet has judged multiple episodes of Cutthroat Kitchen and is no stranger to the kind of evilicious Alton is capable of bestowing upon the competitors. So when Jet showed such a wowed reaction to one particular sabotage featured on tonight’s episode, fans knew this challenge must have been especially diabolical.

The sabotage in question was none other than the paper cutter auctioned off during Round 3’s steak Diane test, which allowed Chef Frances to slice or dice Chef Jaron’s piece of meat for a whopping 30 seconds. Because a singular round of meat — usually a fillet — is a signature element of steak Diane, shredded meat could mean disaster, and it ultimately did for Chef Jaron, who failed to take advantage of his newly cut-up beef. Alton told Jet of how he would have approached the obstacle, explaining: “I’m going to chop it down to even smaller pieces, and I’m going to either do it like it started to be a tartare, or I’m going to make a fricken burger kind of thing out of it.” He added of Chef Jaron’s obvious demise, “The second that he didn’t do that, I thought, ‘This is over.'” And sure enough, Chef Jaron walked away empty-handed.

Cutthroat Kitchen competitors know that when they begin their time in the contest, they’re agreeing to as many as three rounds of unforeseeable problems; chances are high that no matter what dish host Alton Brown asks for, the chefs won’t be able to execute their dream versions of it, be that on account of sabotage, poor planning or simply bad luck. Adapting to challenges is the name of the game on Cutthroat Kitchen, and a contestant’s inability to do that may ultimately do him or her in.

That’s precisely what happened on tonight’s all-new episode when Chef Kristina was gifted a can of spiced ham to use in place of fresh meat in her sloppy joes dish. “I think she wasn’t willing to embrace an ingredient,” Alton told judge Jet Tila on the After-Show. “She saw something that she knew came out of a can, and it was, like, checkout,” he added. Instead of sticking with a traditional approach of ground protein in sloppy joes, Chef Kristina simply sliced the canned product, and Jet wasn’t willing to pardon her for that. “It was slop on a plate,” Jet admitted, and Alton reminded fans, “You’ve got to embrace the ingredient, regardless of its origin.”

From ingredient swaps and time-sucks to inferior utensils and makeshift workstations, Cutthroat Kitchen sabotages are notoriously evilicious and designed to keep the competitors guessing at all times. On tonight’s all-new episode, the chefs were wowed when host Alton Brown introduced a never-before-seen challenge, what he deemed the Wheel of Heat.

Labeled with multiple heat sources like oven, microwave, stove and broiler, this sabotage would forced the rival who was gifted this challenge to spin the wheel while cooking and switch his or her cooking method to whichever heat source was landed upon. It turns out that the wheel offered no beginner’s luck, as Chef Renae found out when she was forced to work with it during the Round 2 blackened-fish test. “Every time she spun it, it came up ‘microwave,'” Alton explained to judge Simon Majumdar during the After-Show. “This, I think, was the end for Chef Renae because she had to do her entire blackened dish with a microwave,” he added. Simon admitted, “The fish was dry. It lacked that crust, which you expect from blackened fish.” But he noted that had other elements of her dish been executed better, he may have been more likely to excuse her microwave seafood. “There were too many things wrong,” Simon said, “whereas I could have forgiven her if she’d served that fish that wasn’t perfect with a really good accompaniment.”

Since Cutthroat Kitchen judges are sequestered from the kitchen while the chefs are cooking, they’re not privy to the evilicious sabotages that unfold during each round. This means that when they first lay eyes on the dish before them, they have no information other than how it’s presented; then once they’ve tasted it, of course, they can take its flavor and texture into consideration.

Tonight’s judge, Simon Majumdar, explained what that feeling is like as he approaches the kitchen and sees contestants’ plates for the first time. “Sometimes as you come down the stairs,” he told Alton Brown on the host’s After-Show, “and you look at the dishes as they’re laid, and you go, ‘Uh, I think I know the way this is going to go.’ And often I’m wrong because they taste great.” It turns out, however, that Simon’s worst suspicions were confirmed when it came to tonight’s Round-2 Reuben sandwich challenge.

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